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Fun things of interest to me, and maybe you.

parenting experience

There are days when parenting is a trial. There are days when you feel like you’ve dropped the ball on an issue. There are days when you feel pretty good about something with the kid/s. There are days when you feel like you have struck out in every at bat in a double header. Then there are days when you feel like you hit a Home Run 10 times over. A recent experience was a Home Run in my parenting.

This last week we were heading home in the evening. My 10 year old son, Smiley, had spent the later afternoon at the office with me, doing things such as reading and the like. We were listening to the station BOB-FM, 103.5 out of Austin. They play a wide variety of music, and much of it is stuff I already know and like. Well, with just about 30 seconds to go on our way home the Bangles’ song, “Walk like an Egyptian” came on the radio. We pulled into the driveway and parked the car. As I was about to turn off the car I thought to myself, “Hey, that is one of our favorite songs. It is the one with the line that sounds like ‘The Hardy Boys call the Kremlin.'” (I know it is not the ‘Hardy Boys’, but we say that for fun.) Anyway, before I could say what I was thinking, out of the back seat my 10 year old son says something like, “Can we keep this song on until the end?”

I was awed and delighted. My super cool son is even cooler than I knew. He likes great music like The Bangles. How did this happen? Maybe has heard this song dozens of times. You must know that it has a permanent place on my iPhone. Yes, it came out when I was about 19, which was a couple years ago…

…even so, he asked for a song to be kept on until the end, and it was one of his dad’s favorites. It wasn’t something I would have to tolerate.

So, this parenting experience was a Home Run of sorts, yet it wasn’t something to write in a book about great parenting or whatever. Even so, I was still pretty happy about it.

I have always liked music, and it is fun when my son and I can connect on something like this. Sure, there will be days ahead when he might like some really odd new thing, and I expect that to happen. There are already songs he is mentioning that I don’t know. But, for now, and likely in the decades to come, he and I can “Walk like an Egyptian” and laugh and talk and connect.

All the old paintings on the tombs
They do the sand dance don’t you know
If they move too quick (oh whey oh)
They’re falling down like a dominoAll the bazaar men by the Nile
They got the money on a bet
Gold crocodiles (oh whey oh)
They snap their teeth on your cigarette